Missives from the Paris contemporary art season: Day 3

Natasha Jeyasingh gives us a daily lowdown on the Paris art season. Here's Day 3 of her art tour

This year there are 193 galleries at the Grand Palais and of these, Experimenter art gallery from Kolkata is the lone representative from south Asia. Featured: (Right) Bharti Kher’s ‘Skin Spot’ is complimented by Xavier Veilhan’s ‘Mobile no 6’ at Perrotin; (Left)

Content, Curation and Calcutta – Experimenter @FIAC

Forget diamonds, sneakers are a girl’s best friend during art season and the best way to achieve your goal of 10,000 steps a day is to attend the Foire International D’art Contemporarin, aka FIAC.

The Grand Palais on the Champs-Elysee makes for a spectacular venue to showcase the Foire Internationale d’art Contemporain (FIAC)

Established in 1974, FIAC is the oldest fair dedicated to the contemporary art scene. It takes place at the monumental Grand Palais and its extended programs at the Musee Louvre, Jardin Tuilleris and Petit Palais ensure it a place as one of the top fairs in the world.

This year there are 193 galleries at the Grand Palais and of these, Experimenter art gallery from Kolkata is the lone representative from south Asia. Showcased in the Lafayette Sector, a program that supports young galleries, this is their second outing at FIAC.

The Grand Palais building, inaugurated in 1900, was designed for housing the great artistic events of Paris.

The Experimenter @FIAC

“The Lafayette sector is a curated section where galleries under 10 years are selected based on specific proposals sent. It’s a great section to be a part of—the overall system is very helpful for a young gallery, not only do they help monetarily by reducing prices but they really aid your presence by bringing specific institutions, collectors and curators to you. The Lafayette section also opens an hour before the main fair. You usually get to be a part of it once but we feel grateful that they liked our proposal well enough to have been showcased twice,” states Priyanka Raja, one half of the founding team of Experimenter.

I’m sitting at the booth with Raja. Our conversation keeps getting interrupted (not that I mind) by people stopping to enquire about the work or simply to say hello—TATE research curator Nada Raza, and other star curators such as Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Catherine David, artist Shilpa Gupta and her architect husband Rajiv Saini, and collectors like Priti Paul and Koel Purie are some of the people who drop by to catch up with Raja.

Their previous outing at FIAC was a solo show of Bani Abidi and this year, Ayesha Sultana’s abstract minimal work takes over the space in the form of gouache paintings, water colours, sculptures, and a stunning graphite work. What sets Experimenter apart from other galleries in India is their decision to not have artists from a particular geographical location alone. What this means is that its roster of artists isn’t only Indian—Ayesha Sultana for example is an artist from Bangladesh—and this global outlook is perhaps the reason FIAC has been a great experience for them.

When asked why there are no other Indian galleries at FIAC, Raja muses, “Quite a few Indian galleries did FIAC earlier. And every time a gallery decides to stop doing a fair it’s either because they haven’t done well or they’ve maxed out the potential that they can get from a particular fair.”

Martha Jungwirth’s oil on paper on canvas is a perfect foil for Sudharshan Shetty’s work at Galerie Krinzinger

Solo by Ayesha Sultana

Last year, they had the good fortune of having two of their artists showcased in the Lafayette section–Bani Abidi, through their booth and Samson Young who was shown by another gallery–I ask if it is a conflict of interest when an artist is represented by multiple galleries and she tells me it’s actually helpful. “It’s like having larger shoulders on which the artist can be supported, their work is seen by a wider audience where we might not be present, be it other fairs, institutions, collections–as long as the galleries are of the same caliber and share the same philosophies and vision for what the artist wants to do, it works well. It’s not a competition but a coalition,” elaborates Raja.

Experimenter’s booth this year showcases a solo show by Ayesha Sultana. This is often the case when they are trying to develop a market and conversation around a particular artist—to show a strongly curated body of work so collectors and curators get a sense of the artistic practice.

The work of Seher Shah and Kamrooz Aram in dialogue at Green Art Gallery

“There is a lot of focus on Ayesha’s work currently, her work and studio practice is going from strength to strength and she’s been collected by leading institutions in Europe and Asia, including the TATE Modern recently, and we thought it is a good moment for her to be in a solo presentation to build a deeper European presence for her work,” explains Raja.

Sultana, who has flown down to be at the fair, tells me that the planning for the booth began roughly a year ago. Prateek Raja, the other half of Experimenter began the process by writing the curatorial note after which, over a number of discussions the displayed body of work was selected. Changes happen until the end with the focus always on the strength of the booth.

My favourite is the graphite work titled ‘Bare’. Sultana tells me how she began using graphite when she was broke and the only material she could afford were pencils that she would use on scraps of paper. The shimmering surface of ‘Bare’ brings to mind the sheen of metal even as your brain accepts the fragility of the graphite that makes it—a reflection of the fortitude of its maker I think.

Detail of Kadar Attia’s work ‘Eternal conversation’. Attia was the recipient of the Marcel Duchamp prize in 2016

Contemporary Art Market in India

I ask Raja if she thinks the Indian market isn’t supportive of contemporary art and is too driven by investment buying. “Most of our artists have support and keen interest from Indian collectors. However, in India there is more of a south Asian focus in collecting, thus artists like Ayesha Sultana, Prabhakar Pachpute, Naeem Mohaiemen, Bani Abidi, Rathin Barman, Adip Dutta, Krishna Reddy have a stronger following. But, the same artists and our other international artists such as Samson Young or Nadia Kaabi-Linke have keen followers in private and institutional collectors worldwide. If one is able to carefully place the work of the artist, some truly meaningful and long tern collector-artist relationships can be formed. We focus a deeply on developing the same,” explains Raja.

Michelangelo Pistoletto’s untitled work at Galeria Continua

Prateek and Priyanka remain committed to growing the audience back home, already known for the Experimenter Curator’s Hub, an annual 3-day exchange of ideas and conversation with international curators—they wish to take it further with more such programs and an extended agenda on ‘learning’ embedded into their programming. They plan to start a second and more ambitious space that will allow them to extend their program into one that is more discursive and dialogical.

And as to whether they will come back to Paris next year, Raja says, definitely. “FIAC is a destination fair which draws a very vast and serious European audience to it. The audience here is interested in a long-term relationship with the galleries and the artists that they collect. It would be important to continue the dialogue,” she signs off.

Pae White’s solo at Galerie Neugerriemschneider showcases the artist’s new large-scale tapestries. In front is one of her famous ‘Popcorn’ pieces. White’s work was shown at Project 88 in Mumbai last year as part of a group show curated by Diana Betancourt